We Are the Flesh

Director: Emiliano Rocha Minter

Screenplay: Emiliano Rocha Minter

Minutes: 79

Year: 2016

Score: 5.00

Release: Arrow Video

First, be warned, We Are the Flesh is very sexually explicit. If explicit sex is not your bag, and it is not mine, this movie will be a pass that may have its audience, but I am not it.

We Are the Flesh is a gross movie about a post-apocalyptic wasteland, or so we are led to believe. The film takes place inside a building with very little time outside. A weird (bad) hombre, (it’s a Mexican film so it’s alright to say that) has appeared to completely lost his marbles, makes his own gasoline, and trades it for eggs. When a brother and sister happen upon his warehouse he feeds them and in return they help him transform the building into a cave. When the cave is done he forces them (and it get super weird here) to have sex with each other while he masturbates. From here on everyone is just off the rails gross and I nearly turned it off.

Okay, don’t watch this movie. As I mentioned there is an audience for this film and Minter undoubtedly successfully fulfilled his vision of the film. So it is not all bad. The craftsmanship is there. The film uses color palette transition as a tool to move the story forward and that is very interesting. The sex scene, while gross, was filmed with a thermal camera which doesn’t change what is happening but makes it the most interesting love scene I have watched.

Looking back on my scores it is fairly clear that Minter put his focus clearly on a few aspects of the film and completely abandoned others which is a bad move. The zero is parity is derived from a completely inconsequential rape scene. The story and script also held the film down. These were not enough to equal out the cinematography, score and sound design; these were all, frankly, really good.

Special features

While the disc includes some poorly-recorded, boring, interviews it also includes two of the director’s short films, Dentro and Videohome. These are neat, not good, not too bad, I like to be able to see what directors have done early in their careers sometimes and I am more likely to revisit Dentro than I am the Feature.

I am not able to recommend this film, perhaps if you are a fan of Gaspar Noe and a few Lars von Trier films, maybe, but not a general recommendation.

Director: 7 – Cinematography: 10 – Edit: 7 – Parity: 0 – Main performance: 5 – Else performance: 4 – Score: 8 – Sound: 7 – Story: 3 – Script: 3 – Effects: 4 – Design: 10 – Costumes: 2 – Keeps interest: 5 – Lasting: 0